Castles in the Sky
by Ukaisha
Summary: Craig never wondered about anything. He liked his world to be neat and compact and all planned out according to how he wanted it to be, even if he just wound up building castles in the sky. (Kenny and Craig friendship, nonromantic. Oneshot. Concrit plz)


A/N: This story isn't slash unless you really anxiously want to see it that way. It's just friendship. Long, tiresome friendship. -nods- Tryin' to keep it neutral.  
Coincidentally, this story takes place in the same universe as another story of mine, '_Weeds', _although it's not necessary to read in order to understand what's going on. This story takes place roughly a week and a half after '_Weeds_.'

A special thanks to James for being a supportive little shit, not too unlike Kenny. Here's your Craig and Kenny doing nothing but talking for 13,000 words.

And to my Stan for letting me blab on about it for years :'D gab u rock rly

I've only recently returned to writing after an extended hiatus, and I'm diving headfirst into a whole new fandom to boot. I'm continuously experimenting with characters I'm not yet familiar with. I feel like Kenny has established some sort of foothold in my writing style, but seeing as this is my first time writing Craig, I'd appreciate some input on my portrayal of his character, especially since I feel like I strayed a bit from the "norm" on him.

I adore constructive criticism. Please criticize this; I'm begging on my knees. Really. Part of the reason I went on such a long hiatus was because I felt that my writing ability had become stagnant.

Ty.

* * *

Castles in the Sky

_Do you ever question your life?  
Do you ever wonder why?_

_Do you ever see in your dreams  
__all the castles in the sky?__  
_

-Cascada, _Castles in the Sky_

Craig sat apart from the redneck gaggle, alone except for a fuzzy brown and white rodent held hostage in his lap. A younger animal might have found this intolerable and made every attempt to free himself, but Stripe was old for a Guinea pig, going on seven years old, and he seemed content to nestle against the hot fabric of his master's jeans, occasionally taking nibbles out of the carrots and celery that Craig had swiped for him from the vegetable platter.  
To avoid causing a fuss amongst his younger cousins, Craig held open a Red Racer comic book blocking Stripe from view, and while he had already read through it twice since the barbeque started, he didn't seem to mind going through it a third time.  
On the table to his right was a paper plate piled high with Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles, and beside that two cans of Dr. Pepper; one already empty and the other freshly popped.

There was other food to be had, ribs dripping with a saucy glaze and hot dogs charred black and red and any number of sides to go with them, but Craig was content with Ruffles, Stripe, and Red Racer.

The weather had taken a considerable turn for the better, for once, and while the sun was strong and the sky was clear, the day was cool. Memorial Day had come on the most beautiful day of the week, and the Tucker family had no hesitations about enjoying every minute of it. They had come from Fairplay and Conifer and any other nearby mountain towns in the area, for the Tucker family was very widespread, and it had been determined that it was high time for Thomas Tucker to host his family's bi-annual reunion barbeque.  
The backyard was crammed full of raucous redneck adults and shrieking, hyperactive children, all of them sporting patriotic apparel of the red, white, and blue variety; God Bless America and all that good stuff. There were too many Tuckers to count, and seeing as most of them were too damn drunk to count themselves anyway, this didn't seem to be an issue. The barbeque was going well considering the heated nature of the family, and there had yet to be a serious fight. It was shaping up to be a very pleasant family reunion.

And best of all, all of them ignored Craig, and Craig ignored all of them, and again, he was very content with this.

Stripe stirred in his lap and turned his squat body around 180 degrees, now facing the pages detailing the adventures of one Red Racer. His little body heaved as he sighed, and he snuggled up closer against the walls of his bed.  
Craig's jeans were dark, not quite black but still attracting the warmth from the sun like a magnet. The Guinea Pig appeared very warm, comfortable, and lazy, and though Craig offered him another chunk of carrot, he refused. The Guinea Pig shook with a sigh again, and then he drifted off.

Craig tossed the carrot in his mouth and crunched loudly as he turned the page of the comic book. Beneath his navy blue hoodie, he was starting feel warm and sleepy himself. He was beginning to think it might prove to be too hot to keep the elderly rodent outside with him, and it was probably for his own good that he return him to his cage. He didn't want to cause him any undue stress.

The trick was going to be getting away from the barbeque without letting his mother realize that he had brought the Guinea Pig out after being expressly told not to, while also avoiding giving her the impression that he had just wanted to get away only because he was antisocial.

Already he was catching the glances she was throwing him, not yet at the point of anger but very obviously breaching irritation. He always did this, she would complain; the family would have a nice barbeque to get together and catch up on family matters and old friendships, and Craig would isolate himself from them, remaining solitary and speaking to no one the entire time until he managed to connive some plot of escape. She would be on high alert and maintain a visual on him for the remainder of the afternoon, and even a casual trip to the bathroom would raise suspicion.

It was no secret that Craig hated to be involved with these sort of family gatherings. He always did.  
His family called him "odd" and "solemn," and he just called them rednecks and hicks.  
He was not terribly interested in socializing with them; they always wanted to discuss sports and politics and the war and wrestling and other things he had no interest in. He gave them credit at first for trying to include him, but he preferred to watch from afar.  
It wasn't that he didn't really like his family, or vice versa. They were different. Things that were different ought to be apart, and Craig and his family were as different as land and sea.

He wished Clyde or Token could have come, but they were occupied with their own Memorial Day celebrations. He would be stuck pretending to be a part of the family until the end of the day, until he could convince his mother to stop putting up a front so he could vanish until the suffocating crowd dispersed.

"Hey there, Craigy." The fragile bubble of solitude burst, and Craig glanced up from the comic book, allowing it to fall forward slightly over Stripe to hide him from sight.  
Three of his older cousins had wandered over. He was pretty sure they were from one of his relatives from Fairplay, but he didn't know them personally. He didn't know how or why they knew his name.  
"Hey," he greeted back. He at least tried to appear interested and friendly to them, as his mother had always instructed, but try as he might he could not recall their names, nor who their parents might be. One was short, squat, and ginger, but the other two were tall, blond, and muscular, and they all looked like typical dull-witted rednecks to Craig. He hoped they wouldn't try to talk to him for very long.

"Why are you here all by yourself bro?" said the ginger in a pleasant enough voice. "Come hang out with us; we're playing football," Craig wasn't entirely against playing football; if it came down to it, he pretty good at it. But besides watching over the Guinea Pig in his lap, Craig looked his cousins over, and he didn't like what he saw. He was only 13, but despite being nearly as tall as them, he was nowhere near as filled out. These boys were likely at least 15, maybe as old as 16 or 17, and they looked burly and rough; not his usual crowd. Playing a contact sport like football with them seemed like a distinctly bad idea.  
"No thanks," he said. "I'm enjoying my book."

Craig was more than used to getting his balls busted for reading Red Racer comics at his age; South Park was a small town and as ruthless as they come. He had expected distant family to be no different and it should have come as no surprise to him that his cousins would not understand his desire to be left alone to read in peace.  
Nonetheless, his cheeks felt warm as they laughed in response, and he felt a vein in his neck throb as they pointed at the book with a jeer.

"Come on Craigy, you've been reading that stupid book since this all started," said one of the blonds; the only thing really distinguishing him from the other was his squashed nose, like it had been broken one too many times. "Why don't you come be social?"  
"I'd rather not." It was a very simple rejection, but they found it humorous, and they exchanged mocking looks and snickers once again.

"You don't sound really happy Craigy, are we bothering you?" said the third cousin, his voice mockingly high pitched, as though he were speaking to a young child.  
Unconsciously, Craig furrowed his brow. "No," he said honestly. The cousins weren't very pleasant, but they weren't really bothering him; not any more than the rest of the ruckus around him was, anyway.  
And he wasn't TRYING to sound unhappy by any means; he obviously would have to work on the inflection in his voice a little more. His parents were always harping on him about it. _'Perception is everything, Craig, perception is everything.'  
_Like how he perceived that these three assmunchers weren't going to leave him alone, no matter how nice he tried to be.

"You don't _look_ very happy either. Why are you looking at us funny, Craigy? What did we do to you?"  
Maintaining a blank, neutral expression, trying to inflect his voice to sound friendly, he said, "I'm not."  
"Oh, you're definitely looking at us funny," agreed the ginger. They still seemed to be sharing some silent, private joke with the way they kept exchanging sly looks at each other. "But why? Do you think you're better than us or something?"  
Bemused, Craig replied, "No?"  
"Like, while we're all laughing and drinking and having a good time, you're just sitting there reading some faggy comic book and that makes you better than us?"  
"Dude, I don't even know what you're talking about," he replied flatly, still refusing to let the agitation slowly building in him show. If they thought he sounded pissed off or something when he was actively trying to be friendly, God forbid they _actually_ hear him sounding pissed off.

"What's that book even about, anyway? Got any hot babes in it?" The squash nosed blond grabbed at the comic and ripped it out of Craig's hands before he could even think about reacting.  
Jerking up, Craig yelled "DONT!" and tried to make a grab for it, but his cousin held it well out of reach, and Craig couldn't retrieve it without disturbing the snoozing Guinea Pig in his lap. And so he was forced to sit there, gritting his teeth, while the three snickered above him and roughly handled his favorite comic book.  
"Just some fag in a race car," his cousin was telling the other two as he carelessly flipped through the pages, and then he glanced down and found the snoozing Stripe. "Ugh, dude!" he cried, throwing the comic book to the ground and hastily stepping away. "Why the fuck do you have a hamster in your crotch?"  
"It's a fucking Guinea Pig, you moron." Craig growled as he bent over to retrieve Red Racer.  
"Gross. Why isn't it in a cage? Fucking weirdo." Even before he had fully recovered with the comic book, Craig anticipated their advances this time, and he hunched over to protect Stripe first and foremost. But the three of them were too much at once. While he tried to wrestle away from two of them, the other one managed to wrap a hand around the cowering rodent. Stripe squealed as he was grabbed away and flung into the air, and Craig's heart stopped as he watched the rodent helplessly flail its little legs until the ginger caught him, only to throw him into the air again.  
"Stripe!" he yelled in panic as the Guinea Pig squealed again, and the other three laughed and mimicked his frantic cry.  
They pushed him to the ground when he tried to come after them, and then they took off, still taunting "Stripe! Stripe!" as they weaved into the crowd.

Craig wasted no time in leaping to his feet and taking after his assailants with a single-minded determination, pushing and shoving through any of the other relatives who thoughtlessly blocked the way. He didn't lose sight of them for a second, and when they looked back and he murderously caught their eyes, they just grinned and began throwing Stripe again. "LET GO OF HIM!" Craig snarled, diving after the thieves as they tossed the squealing Stripe back and forth. "He's old, you dumbfucks! He's an innocent animal! You'll hurt him!"  
"We're just playin'," drawled the ginger. He stopped and raised the hand curled around Stripe, calling out "Go long!" as he pointed into the distance. He let the Guinea Pig fly, its little legs wriggling in panic, and Craig reacted without thinking. When the squash nosed blond blocked his path, he tackled into him and threw him to the ground as hard as he could. He ran to catch up with Stripe, going at a reckless, drop-dead sprint for a few long, interminable seconds before he swiped the rodent out of thin air, and then drew him closely to his chest.  
Craig managed to slow to a stop before he ran straight into another bunched up group of unknown relatives, and the whole time he had his arms protectively wrapped around Stripe, hiding him from all the world.  
"You okay buddy?" he whispered into his arms. The Guinea Pig was wheezing with excitement and its little heartbeat was pulsing rapidly, but Stripe appeared to be in too much shock to even wriggle.  
"The fuck, kid? You scrapped up my knee." Craig looked up from his charge and saw the three closing in on him. He had turned his back to them, and now he was surrounded.  
"You could have killed him!" Craig accused bitterly. Worse yet, as he inspected the Guinea Pig, the scare wasn't ever over yet. Stripe was starting to shake and twitch, and his eyes bulged. Craig was grinding his teeth, almost too furious to even speak. "He could fucking die from shock and it would be your fault!"  
"We were just trying to have some fun; do you even know what that is, freak?"  
"Yeah, what the fuck's wrong with you, Craigy?"  
Craig slipped Stripe into his hoodie pocket and braced himself. Suddenly, their dumb redneck muscles seemed a little less superficial and a lot more painful.

* * *

Thomas Tucker had only just popped the top of a fresh beer when he heard the commotion. At first, it seemed to blend with the noisy atmosphere that comes with a large crowd, as well as the speakers blaring the highlights of a football game on the tube. But someone caught his eye, and from across the room he yelled; "Tom! Yer boy's out here whoopin' Nicky's kids!"

Alarmed, he had plopped the can down on the table, still nearly full, and began fighting his way through the hoards of Tuckers blocking the way. The fight had already come and gone by the time he finally arrived on the scene, and there was no question who had gotten off worst. A boy in a blue hoodie was lying on the ground, holding a hand over his eye, while the other three were restrained by various relatives.

"What the fuck is going on here, boys?" he hollered. His stomach sunk when all three boys pointed at Craig and accused him of starting it, and yet, he was somehow unsurprised. The boy on the ground did not refute their accusation, and again, he was unsurprised. "Craig, are you causing trouble again?" he said, his voice roaring over the chatter.  
Craig wiped his mouth with his sleeve; his face was bloody all over, running in his eyes like tears and pouring from his mouth like breath. "They were fucking with me and Stripe," he mumbled, his words garbled from the blood. He spit some of it out onto the ground. "They were going to hurt him."  
From inside the front pocket of the oversized hoodie, Thomas could just see a wriggling bulge inside. Predictably, the boy had brought the Guinea Pig to keep him company during what would surely feel like a blatant reminder that he was an outcast. Craig never did like family gatherings, but his mother insisted that he be present rather than sulk in his room.  
Thomas wished this sort of thing were uncommon, but considering how infrequently the whole family met up, it was not.

Thomas glanced around, and second by second the scene slowly became clear. It had obviously been three on one, and yet Craig had just barely held his own. He had suffered a resounding defeat, but not without giving the other three a beating to write home about, and this all on top of the fact that he was a lot younger than them.  
Regardless of the circumstance, there was always this weird feeling of pride knowing your kid kicked some other kid's ass.

And besides, Thomas knew how his son was about that rodent.  
Fuck; he knew how he was in general.

Only a few seconds had passed since Craig had offered up his pitiful defense, and while the other boys were spilling the beans fast and furious, (namely blaming Craig) the rest of the family seemed to be waiting for Thomas's response.  
"Well, pick your ass up and get over here," Thomas grumbled.  
"Yes sir," Craig mumbled back, still holding a hand over his eye as he pushed himself up with the other.

The barbeque was an all day event and food was still being cooked and served as needed, meaning that quite a bit of it was stashed away in coolers full of ice. Thomas wound up digging inside one of these coolers and found a wrapped hamburger patty, red and raw and dotted with little crystals of ice, and as Craig solemnly reached his side Thomas plopped the patty over his son's left eye; the one that had already started swelling.  
"Leave that on for a bit and then throw it away," he grunted. Craig nodded.

"Tommy, you can't just let yer boy get away with beating up my boys." A stout man with receding red-orange hair, not too unlike Thomas, had decided to step forward. This, presumably, was Nicky.  
"Well maybe your boys needed a good ass kicking," Thomas smoothly replied. Truthfully, he didn't exactly know the boys or their father very well, (the Tucker family was VERY large, after all) but he wasn't about to let Craig take all the blame for it. "If three boys that are damn near men wind up lookin' like THAT cause of a thirteen year old when they're matched up three to one, then they've got some learnin' to do about life." While the other three visibly seemed to shrink self-consciously, Craig allowed the remark to go in one ear and right out the other.

"Don't you make him feel like he's done good, Tommy. You know that kid's already enough trouble." He seemed to have little regard for the fact that Craig himself was still standing directly beside Thomas, saying nothing and gazing intently at the ground with his good eye while his bad one was nursed by a dripping hunk of ground meat.  
"Craig ain't never caused no trouble that someone else didn't make for themselves," Thomas said, and even he caught the tone of defensiveness in it. "Maybe your boys need to learn to respect someone's space. Craig is...sensitive."  
"That ain't givin' him the right to go knockin' folks out over a goddamn rat."  
"Guinea Pig," Craig corrected with a dark mutter.  
Neither of the two men acknowledged him.

It wasn't long before his mother came and, much to his chagrin, began to baby him, chiding and scolding and chattering. Thomas told them to go on inside and properly clean him up, but before they could take their leave, Nicky had one last accusation to make.

"That boy ain't right, Tommy. You know that."  
With Craig safely tucked under his mother's wing, Thomas had no hesitation in coming right up to his cousin's face. Being a tall man was usually advantageous in these situations, but Nicky was pumped full of beer taking the form of liquid courage, and he was not about to back down from a little intimidation.  
"You go ahead and insult my family again," Thomas threatened, "and see that Craig must have learned how to kick ass from somewhere."  
"Tommy, I ain't saying it's yer fault. I mean, everyone knows the boy isn't even yers."  
The words came out in a partly drunken slur, but the meaning rang clear as day. Around them, there was awkward silence. Despite his previous threat, Thomas was at a loss for words.  
Craig and his mother had not quite left earshot, but neither of them gave any implication of having heard the words.  
They had.

* * *

When a loud squeak and firm footsteps shot through the silence, Craig Tucker was perturbed just enough to lift his head an inch or so from the desk; just long enough to see McCormick enter the room. After establishing that the disturbance was in no way of interest to him, he allowed his head to descend back onto the desk again, forehead planted squarely on his forearm.  
Unbeknownst to him, McCormick handed a slip of paper to today's lucky babysitter, Mr. Adler, shop class teacher for fifteen years running, without making eye contact or saying a word. He was directed to find somewhere to sit and advised not to screw around. Then McCormick took a seat in the back, one or two rows away from Craig. There was no friendly acknowledgment of acquaintanceship as he walked by, and Craig likewise made no effort to acknowledge him in return.

There were only three students in the classroom now; Craig, McCormick, and an eighth grader whom Craig did not know; nor did he want to know, if it came to that. He had been to this room several times before for various petty crimes that continued adding strikes to his record, but he had no interest in forming a Goddamn Breakfast Club because of it.  
It was a small turnout. McCormick would likely be the last person arriving; he had been ten minutes late as it was. Few were tardier than that.  
It was a quarter past eight in the morning. South Park K-8 Saturday Detention could commence.

"Ya'll better have brought some paper and pencil like you were told to," grumbled Mr. Adler to the three inattentive students. Groping blindly for his bag, Craig continued lounging listlessly on the desk until the moment he physically had to move his head to place his notebook down. Then he rose with all the alacrity of a slug, rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes with one hand as he perched his chin upon the other. As many times as he'd been forced to attend Saturday detention, the injustice of losing a perfectly good day to sleep in until noon was never quite dulled.

Mr. Adler grunted as he rose from the chair, putting a hand to his hip and stretching his back until several loud, disconcerting popping noises were heard. Afterward, he picked up a stack of paper workbooks, separated three, and began shuffling towards the three troublemakers entrusted in his care.  
"These are your assignments for the day," he said. The unnamed eighth grader received one, and then McCormick. "Ya'll are going to keep busy throughout the day with school work your teachers have put together for you. If you're stuck here anyway you may as well be productive, so do your work and don't screw around." As he handed Craig his own workbook and then began trailing back to the desk, he mumbled under his breath, "Ya'll screw around too much," which in this particular case happened to be true. Craig had been in Saturday detention more times than he could count this school year. The teachers were on a rotational basis, but those without immediate family members were more likely to be scooped up for the job. Mr. Adler had been in charge no less than six times just this semester.  
The majority of those detentions, Craig had been there.

A quick glance at the notebook revealed that it was the same material he had done the last time he had been here, almost three weeks ago. It was a collaborative workbook from his core classes; English, Math, History, Biology; everything had its own little section of material that the teachers would be covering at some point during the quarter.  
The trouble was that Craig had already covered it. Multiple times.

He flipped open the book to the first page, and then continued flipping pages. Math was always first for some reason, and despite having tackled the problems before, he hated math. He'd get back to that one.

Biology, taken down to a level a retarded Guinea Pig could understand.  
Of the following things, what is a frog? A, a bird, B, an amphibian, C, a fish, or D, a reptile.  
Craig would have liked to pick G, for gives no fucks, but that was not an option.  
Biology was demeaning. He would get back to that.

History. This particular workbook's history segment was on the Ancient Romans, on which Craig maintained a certain amount of interest. But having done this workbook more times than he could remember and with nothing else to do on a Saturday than read the exact same passage on Ancient Rome over and over again for six hours, he was burnt out on it.

English and Literature.  
Vocabulary, reading a short story, essay writing.  
He had to start somewhere.

Craig picked up his pen, clicked the button noisily a few times for the hell of it, and then began filling in the blanks.

Vocabulary was easy; his teachers severely underestimated his grasp of the English language. It would not take long, and so he took his time, very purposely writing out each and every letter with utmost care.  
He knew these words not because he had done the work countless times before, but because he knew them as familiar pieces of his life.

_Obsequious_. Excessively compliant or submissive, as he had been when he was told he would have Saturday detention yet again because of Stripe. They didn't understand that Craig couldn't leave him home alone; for days he dreaded waking up and finding the elderly rodent dead, and Craig couldn't bear the thought of him passing while he wasted away at school.  
Until Stripe was fully recovered from the incident, Craig had no intentions of leaving him alone, and he would gladly accept all punishment that came as a result.

_Candor_, honesty or frankness, as he had displayed when he told his mother that the fight was his fault.  
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The point was that if he denied it being his fault, it would probably only make things worse, and so the best course of action was to be candid about it. He was already facing accusations three to one.  
He had, naturally, been grounded shortly thereafter, but he had the feeling that it had been with a heavy heart that his parents had done so.

_Taciturn_, not inclined to talking, which basically was one single, glorious word that pretty much summed up Craig from chullo-clad head to foot. He would not explain what had caused the fight, nor would he go into detail about what his cousins had done to set him off, because he was as taciturn as they come.  
He was also not a snitch.

Later, when the family had finally begun to disperse, the three boys had come to Craig to apologize. They had seemed sincere. Craig had thanked them without that same sincerity and, as was custom for Tuckers, flipped them off. They returned the sentiment and left.  
Stripe would be in a state of constant panic for days to come, but hallelujah, at least the cockheads were _sorry_.

Craig glanced at the clock directly above the door.  
It wasn't quite half past eight. If the wall clock had been an hourglass, Craig felt like someone might have stopped up the neck of it so that the sand was having trouble getting by. Time always moved slowly in school, but it moved even slower when you were in school on a Saturday.  
There were still a long five and a half hours of detention to go.  
He began writing his letters even slower.

The first time McCormick made as though they were familiar with each other, it was to bum a writing utensil off of him.  
Craig was quite lost in thought when a little wad of paper hit the side of his head. Instantly, he threw a scowl and sharp eyes towards the offender, intending to burn out their retinas with his glare, but only McCormick's smug grin was visible. His eyes were covered almost completely by his orange parka, as was the rest of him.  
"Hey dude," he whispered. "Can I borrow a pencil?"  
McCormick had arrived with no bag at all; not even something for lunch. There was a small notebook on the desk that had probably been stuffed in the front pocket of his parka, but that was it.  
What he'd been doing for the past few minutes to occupy himself if he hadn't been doing his workbook, who knew.

On some level, it irritated Craig that he would show up to Saturday detention without being prepared. It wasn't the first time he and McCormick had shared a classroom on these dull Saturdays, and he knew he knew better.

But it was not very important, and anyway, Craig did not care enough. If he let everything he thought was stupid bother him, he would very quickly breech the point of insanity.  
"Whatever," he muttered back. His bookbag's front pocket was a mess of paper, sticks of gum, the paper cartons in which the gum had originally come in, one and a half packs of cigarettes, (which, despite all he HAD gotten in trouble for, had yet to cause him problems) and various plastic wrappers and trash from who knew what and from who knew when. But he eventually found a pen, (it had at some point exploded and was leaking ink, but it was still functional) and he threw it to McCormick, who caught it with a little wave of gratitude.

Craig wordlessly returned to vocabulary, and he let the words soak themselves in.

_Ambivalence_: something that both pleases and offends you. One might also call it conflicting feelings or unresolved emotions.  
Indifference, Craig thought, was a better way to put it.  
To say you were conflicted about a feeling implied that it bothered you, or that you couldn't quite pinpoint the exact nature of the opinion. To have unresolved emotions implied that your goal was to eventually resolve them.  
Indifference was, put crudely, an inability to give a fuck one way or the other.  
That was how he felt about McCormick.  
Well, at the risk of seeming like an apathetic asshole, that sort of applied to everything, really.  
But McCormick in particular, he was entirely indifferent about; that is, if it were possible to have _no_ feelings more strongly towards one thing than the rest.  
Yes, ambivalence. It was an especially good word to know when you felt ambivalent about nearly everything in your life.

It was almost nine o'clock when Mr. Adler slowly rose from his desk. Not one of the three students seemed to acknowledge this change, but he excused himself nonetheless.  
"I've got to take care of something," he mumbled just loud enough for the three troublemakers to hear. "You kids better sit tight and do your work, and don't screw around."  
There was no acknowledgment. Mr. Adler may as well have spoken to the desks that were propping the boys up; he may have received a more adequate response.

As the door finally closed with a loud, solid "CLICK!" Craig immediately reached down to his backpack. No stranger to Saturday Detention, he knew that Mr. Adler would eventually find some reason to ditch them for a few hours, leaving them unattended and free to do as they liked, provided they kept quiet and didn't screw around.  
For Craig, that meant that it was a perfect opportunity to release a certain fat Guinea Pig.

In the large pocket of his bag was a large rectangular "critter carrier," a sort of miniature aquarium that he'd stuffed full of straw and bedding to act as a temporary house for Stripe during travel.  
He brought Stripe to school all the time, and he especially loved bringing Stripe to detention. Six hours with nothing to do but read the same dull worksheets over and over again could be a little overwhelming without SOMETHING to keep your mind off of it.

But as he reached inside to grab the handle of the box, his heart sank right into his stomach. His hands met no lid; they kept going directly into the box, eventually reaching dusty bedding. Horrified, he yanked open the backpack, and confirmed the worst: the lid had at some point come off the box, and Stripe was nowhere to be seen.

Instantly, he flung away the bag and then fell out of the desk onto his hands and knees. Intently he began scanning the floor, absorbing tile by tile and inch by inch with all the intensity of a hawk scanning the fields for a tasty meal.

From somewhere in the back of the classroom, a soft, self-indulgent voice asked him, "What are you doing?" Craig didn't even look up; he merely explained himself in the most concise way possible.  
"Stripe is missing." He crawled along the aisle, his head on a swivel, his eyes still boring into the cheap white tile stained and scratched with wear. Stripe couldn't have gotten far; he had been in his bag before he had left the house that morning, and he had only been to this room. He HAD to be in here.  
"Stripe? Your Guinea Pig?" McCormick asked, sounding both concerned and confused.  
This time, Craig did not reply. He nodded, though the other boy couldn't see, and he continued his hunt.  
Stripe was old and lethargic. He wouldn't have gone far; he probably wouldn't be hard to catch. The trouble was just finding him.

Without waiting for further explanation, McCormick also lowered himself out of his desk, winding up on his hands and knees as well, opting to take the opposite direction to Craig.  
He didn't take it upon himself to comment about the situation, which was just as well; until Stripe was found safe and sound, Craig would not be able to even pretend to maintain civil conversation.  
The eighth grader had apparently decided his time was best spent asleep, and his face was plastered to his desk, his workbook thoroughly forgotten and the other boys crawling around on the floor thoroughly ignored.

Craig heard a sudden shuffle and a clang as something collided with the metal chair legs, and then a moment of silence. Then, McCormick said: "I got 'im."  
He immediately rose, clearly able to see over the desks even on his knees, and he saw McCormick on nearly the opposite side of the room, sitting with his legs spread in a 'V' and his back hunched over while he observed something small.  
"Is he okay?" he hesitated to ask.  
"He's fine. Come get him."

Craig pulled himself to his feet and slipped in between the desks. When he came upon McCormick, he was allowing the Guinea Pig to crawl about in the 'V' he had erected, occasionally reaching out to pull him closer when he ventured too far out. Stripe seemed just fine, and in fact more active than Craig could recently recall seeing him whenever he brought him to school.  
"There you are," he cooed. McCormick gently picked up the rodent one last time, using both hands to support him, and he reached over his shoulder to wordlessly pass him off to Craig. "You keep getting me in trouble lately, don't you?" At first, he turned without properly giving his thanks, but he was not entirely without modesty, and he chucked over his shoulder, "Thanks, McCormick."  
"Just 'Kenny' works," was his reply.

Craig slipped in between the desks again, eventually sliding into his original seat and then softly lowering Stripe to the lacquered wooden surface. The Guinea pig sniffed about, quickly making the realization that his space to move was limited when every direction lead to an impossibly steep cliff, and then he became still.

Kenny sauntered over after brushing off the dirt and dust from his jeans, and Craig found him over his shoulder. His watchful eyes were still obscured by the orange hood even while he observed the wriggling ball of fur.  
"Why do you have him here, anyway?" Kenny asked. "That's kind of dangerous."  
"Mr. Adler doesn't care," said Craig. Softly, he stroked the underside of Stripe's chin with a single curled index finger, and the Guinea Pig cooed happily. "Besides, I get bored."  
"Ain't you in here to begin with cuz of him?"  
"Maybe." From the backpack, Craig produced a Ziploc bag of sliced apples, mushed from carelessness, and browning at the edges. He set a little slice in front of the rodent as an offering. "Maybe some girls need to stop being sell outs. Stripe wasn't bothering anyone." The Guinea Pig took a casual nibble of the meaty chunk of fruit, but seemed otherwise unimpressed. Peeling off the skin, Craig nibbled at his own slice.  
"Shit, man. I wasn't bothering nobody either. I'm still stuck in this shithole." Kicking the desk beside Craig's until the chair directly faced the boy and his Guinea Pig, Kenny slumped into the hard plastic seat with a sigh. His unseen gaze appeared focused on Stripe.

Truthfully, Craig was not that interested in Kenny, or what he had done to wind up in the aforementioned shithole. But Kenny was clearly bored and looking for some kind of companion, and even if he didn't quite like Kenny as much as he liked Stripe, he figured he had another five hours to fuss over his Guinea Pig anyway.

"And what did you do to earn time?" Craig asked.  
Kenny scoffed and shook his head. "You know how last week Kyle was suspended?"  
"Yeah?"  
"Well, I may have skipped a class or two to hang out with him."  
Unexpectedly, Craig chuckled, albeit it only for a second or two. "I guess the more pertinent question then is how you got caught."  
"Well, I MAY or may not have also skipped a math test that same day, and the school MIGHT have called my parents." His eyes still hidden, his deviously guilty grin dominated what little of his face there was to see.  
"Smooth," said Craig. Kenny just shrugged.  
"I guess that's what I get for trying to be a good friend."  
"Unfortunately, the school makes a distinction between 'good friend' and 'hooligan'."  
"I know, right? What's up with that?"

Craig opted to ignore him and focus on Stripe. The rodent was "pop corning," very abruptly bouncing into the air without warning, and it put a stupid goofy grin on his face; one that Craig reserved especially for his favorite rodent. It was odd to him that Stripe seemed so content, but he reminded himself that Stripe spent just as much time in detention as he did; it probably felt like an extension of home.  
And besides, it meant that Stripe was likely fully recovered after the Memorial Day incident. He hadn't seen Stripe in such a good mood all week, and knowing that his pet was finally feeling like himself again immediately put him in a good mood as well.  
"Damn, that's the cutest thing I've ever seen," he heard Kenny say from beside him. "And I've got no shame in admitting it."  
"It is cute," Craig agreed. He picked another apple slice from the bag, using his thumbnail to peel off the skin. "Want some?" he said, nudging the bag in Kenny's direction. He might not have ordinarily offered, but he was in a good mood, and Stripe didn't appear to want them. He had more snacks in his bag, anyway.  
Kenny never needed to be told twice to take food, and with a curt "thanks" he reached in and grabbed several slices. He nibbled them slowly and watched the Guinea Pig pop and squeal, and they were quiet for some time. In the background, the unnamed eighth grader snored deeply.

"I've got to get back to my workbook," Craig eventually said. He could only stand so much social interaction at a time, and yes, watching his Guinea Pig be adorable with someone, even in silence, counted.  
"Yeah, I suppose I do too."  
Craig opened the book without another word or glance at the other boy, almost as if dismissing him. Kenny didn't seem to take it personally, and he wordlessly slipped out of the desk and trailed back to his seat.

_Drudgery_. Craig could not think of a better word to be featured in this notebook. Utter boredom. A completely uninteresting task. A total lack of excitement.  
AKA, his life.  
To be fair, Craig liked that. He preferred things to be boring. There was so much in the world you couldn't control; it was nice to occasionally be able to control things, even little things, and he relished his ability to keep his life on a strict diet of drudgery on a day to day basis.

Craig heard Kenny rise from his seat again, and it confused him. He had only been gone for a moment, and he'd thought they had both established that they were going to get to work. He glanced over his shoulder to see Kenny moving all of his things to the desk he had pulled up beside Craig's earlier, workbook, notebook, pen and all, and he plopped down into the seat beside him once again.  
Craig tried to give him his retina burning glare, but still, the other boy's eyes could not be seen; there was only a sly little grin.  
"I figured we could pass the time easier this way," Kenny said.  
"Even if we had the same workbook, I wouldn't let you copy mine," Craig warned him. "And I'm not helping you with yours."  
"Relax, I'm smart enough to do my own shit. I'm just bored."

And a word that was not in Craig's vocabulary list:  
_Powerless.  
_For as much as he relished having control over his life, there was the unfortunate matter of not having that same control over someone else's.

Thankfully, Kenny wound up not speaking for some time after that; he immersed himself in the workbook. He seemed to be having some trouble getting the pen to write and it was leaking ink all over his hands, but he didn't complain about it once; he simply smeared the ink off on his jeans, and wrote what he could when he could.

In the meantime, as the boys worked, Stripe began scratching at Craig's arm. The rodent liked to climb on him, especially when he wore his soft, thick hoodie, (Stripe loved snuggling in it) and after a few demanding nips, Craig laid his hand flat on the desk, palm up. Stripe slowly shuffled over his fingers and over his wrist, almost leisurely even as he struggled to make the climb. His squat little body rolling back and forth with each inch gained, he scaled the baggy sleeve up to his master's shoulder, where Craig wound up having to give his dangling rump a little push to get him over the edge.  
With almost no hesitation he went straight to a stray lock of hair not contained within the familiar blue chullo and tried to nibble on it, and he immediately earned an annoyed swat from Craig.  
"Don't you start that now," he warned the rodent, tilting his head to make eye contact with him.  
Being a rodent, Stripe did not respond, but he did leave the hair alone nevertheless. He instead decided to crawl into the bunched up hood draping over Craig's shoulders, and he snuggled contentedly into his new bed.  
"It always kind of weirds me out to see you play with that thing," Kenny suddenly admitted. "Everyone always says you're a hardass and shit and then you bring your Guinea Pig to school and let it crawl on you."  
"Yeah, well, people say a lot of things." Craig slowly rolled his shoulders to give the hood more slack, and Stripe briefly squealed as he rocked back and forth. When it was clear the danger had passed, though, he settled right back into his comfortable nest, and was still.

Craig slumped lower in his chair and propped his feet up on the desk in front of his. He twirled his pen in his thin fingers, staring at the workbook imploring him to analyze a drab piece of poetry.  
Poetry was not his forte. Novels? Effortless. Short stories? Sure. Essays? Easy.  
Poetry? Problem.

He silently read it to himself, mouthing the words and mentally timing the meter when Kenny decided to become a nuisance again. Without provocation, he leaned over Craig's desk and scanned the page he was reading, and he decided it was necessary to read it aloud.  
"'A Dream Within a Dream,'" he read. "Edgar Allen Poe. Never read that one."  
"It's about some guy crying about how much his life sucks," muttered Craig irritably.  
The poem was all of 24 lines long, and it didn't take Kenny long to skim through it.  
"Pretty," was his casual assessment of it.  
"Yeah, thanks. Now tell me how to stretch 'pretty' into 200 words."  
"Fuck, I hate those questions." He scratched his head with the tip of his leaking pen, leaving a dark blue splotch in his golden hair. Craig bit back a smirk, but opted not to point it out to him. "You should totally just compare it to _Inception_," he finally said. "You know, a dream within a dream."  
"I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant."  
"Well, fuck, just write something. There's nothing wrong or right about analyzing poetry; isn't that kind of the point of it?"  
"I've had to analyze this poem before," Craig replied, doodling absently in the top margin of the page. "I've done this workbook before."  
"Then what's the problem? Some of us have real issues with their workbooks. Like this shit." He gestured to his book and flipped to his own analysis section. Kenny also happened to have a poem.

"'The Cow in Apple Time,'" Craig read. "Robert Frost. You should like that one; it's about a whore-"  
"See, that's my problem," Kenny interjected crossly as he threw the pen down on the desk. As it rolled, it trailed a line of ink down the page. "People tell me it's about a whore getting older and wasting her life away or some shit. Dude, it's about a fucking cow. In apple time. It is literally about a cow eating apples. What is the fucking problem about the poem just being about a cow eating apples? Why the fuck does it have to be about a whore?"  
"Well, write that, then." Craig had already begun to tune him out as he focused on writing his assessment on his own poem, for something like the third or fourth time.  
"Like, yours. What are you saying yours means?"  
"Basic shit. Lamenting. Regret in life. Time slipping away."  
"See, that's not what I get out of yours at all."  
"Oh yeah?" Already hastily writing in what he remembered of his last few assessments, Craig didn't seem terribly interested in being enlightened by Kenny's version.  
"See, yours is about a guy obsessing about control. But it's like every time he tries to take control of his life, it slips through his fingers like sand. It slips right through his fingers and he can't hold on to one goddamn grain of it, like he can't control anything. And he doesn't think his reality is real because he he can't control it, and he thinks he can control reality so if he can't control it then it must be a dream."  
"Interesting." Craig was still slowly filling in the lines with his jagged hand writing; he appeared completely unaffected by Kenny's interpretation. "Now if only you would- hey, quit it!" Again he irritably swatted at the rodent on his shoulder; Stripe had begun to nibble his hair again. "Don't make me take you down," he warned. The Guinea Pig's nose twitched innocently, and then he snuggled back into his little bed.  
Kenny's hidden face just grinned.

Two hundred some words later, Craig risked glancing at the wall clock again. Time was drudging by as listless as ever, and the day seemed especially lazy at moving along today.  
Sometimes the day rushed, sometimes it strolled. Craig hated that. He was always meticulous about time; he thought the school day could use a good lesson on time management.  
He gaze drifted over to the boy beside him. Kenny had evidently given up on the writing assessment for the moment and he was mindlessly doodling question marks on the pages in varying styles and degrees of thickness. They reminded him of something, but Craig couldn't pin point the exact origin of them.

"You know, I guess I'm glad," Kenny suddenly said, surprising him out of his brief reverie. He couldn't see Kenny's face, but had he noticed him looking at him?  
Nonetheless, Craig didn't know what he was glad about, and he didn't bother asking; he figured he would get the answer sooner or later, and he was not disappointed. "I mean, I got caught skipping last week and I almost had to do detention on Kyle's birthday. The gods that be took pity on me and postponed it so I could go."  
"Oh, yeah." Craig had shown up to the much touted Bar Mitzvah for an hour or two, namely because Clyde had begged him to. Token had been out of town at the time and while Clyde was friendlier with Kenny's brood than he or Token, he still wasn't fond of being alone with them. They were an unruly bunch. "I was surprised to see Cartman there. I figured Kyle wouldn't let him near the place. I didn't stay to the end; did everything go to shit after I left?"  
"No, Cartman behaved himself. He loves making an ass of himself, but he usually knows the time and place for it."  
"That's cool I guess. So did Kyle walk away loaded or what?"  
"Beats me. He doesn't talk about that kind of thing with me. I guess it makes him uncomfortable."

Craig wasn't surprised. A lack of honesty wasn't the only thing that was wrong with those guys.  
Nonetheless, as socially awkward as he was, Craig knew a request for a subject change when he heard one. "It was Cartman that Kyle beat up, right? Token tells me he served him good."  
"Well, thanks to your little posse, Kyle wasn't able to rearrange his face as originally planned, but yeah, he may have roughed him up a bit."  
"Good for him; I didn't know he had it in him. I mean, the kid's a dick, but at least he can stand up for himself." For some reason Craig could not discern, Kenny seemed to find his remark quite funny, and he began chortling to himself inside the hood. Craig didn't question why. Kenny McCormick found any number of things in his head humorous, and not all of them were appropriate to say aloud.

Kenny apparently deemed the classroom too hot, (and it was; the pleasant weather had passed and it was beginning to become uncomfortably warm) for he shed himself of the obscuring orange hood. It was unusual for him, for even in the most miserable of heat he was nearly never seen without it, but he removed it almost as if inconsequentially. Perhaps it was simply because there was less of an audience than usual; the eighth grader was knocked out cold, and Craig knew he hardly counted as company.

It was a rare sight to behold his face, but Craig ordinarily would not have cared much; there was not much difference to him between the Kenny in the hood and the Kenny out of the hood.  
On this occasion, however, he noticed that Kenny was sporting a solid pair of raccoon eyes, huge black and purple splotches only just turning yellow at the edges, and Craig never was one for tact.  
"Looks like someone rearranged YOUR face, though," he commented carelessly.  
Kenny muttered, "My Pops," and flung his parka over the chair in front of him. The smug little grin he'd been wearing all day underneath his hood seemed to have temporarily dissipated. "They're just black, nothing serious. Don't even hurt no more."  
"Guess he didn't like you skipping school to hang out with Kyle, huh?"  
"No, that wasn't it. They just told me not to be a little shithead and to keep my ass in school."

Now that it was free of the parka, Kenny took the opportunity to tousle his hair roughly. The next time Craig saw him, he had thoroughly wrecked it, and it had become a hopeless mess, like a blond tumbleweed perched upon his head. He seemed content with this, and he leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the back of the desk already playing coat rack to his parka.  
"Then what for?" Craig asked when it seemed there would be no further elaboration on the origin of his colorful eyes.  
Kenny indifferently shrugged again and said, "Fuck if I know." He clearly meant to leave it at that, and Craig knew enough of Kenny to know this. Very rarely did Kenny ever fully explain the issues of his home life, and even his best friends skirted around the edges a bit when they spoke to him.  
Kenny acted like it was normal; why shouldn't they?

However, once again, Craig was not a man to rely on tact, nor one to tread lightly around a delicate topic. "Bull shit," he accused. Kenny threw him an odd look, imploring him to explain himself, which Craig did without much further hassle. "You know damn well what it was for. If you don't want to tell me then just say that, whatever; I couldn't care less. But don't lie to yourself and say it was out of your control."  
"It kind of _was_ out of my control, dude. Or do you think I asked to get the shit beat out of me for the fuck of it?" Kenny's voice had abruptly become sharp and bitter, and even Craig couldn't deny feeling a little twinge of guilt as he spoke. "'Oh please, Pops,'" said Kenny in a painfully high falsetto. "'Jest go right ahead and gimme an ass whoopin' fer this. And please, aim fer my face so I can't hide it like I can everything else.'"  
"You know what I mean, dumb ass."  
"I guess not, _Craig_."  
Craig would not look Kenny in the eyes, especially given that the spat had erupted around the bruises surrounding them. So he stared intently at his workbook, very slowly and painstakingly picking his words.  
"I'm not saying you deserved it, I'm saying stop playing devil-may-care about it and own up to what you did; don't just say it was for no damn reason. I don't buy it, McCormick. Maybe your shitty friends do, but don't insult me by treating me like them."

Kenny sulked in the chair with his arms crossed for some time before he spoke again. "All I did was call him an old drunk," he said sorely. "Ain't it the truth? All the bastard does is sit around and get plastered. I was stating facts. I didn't do nothing."  
"You did something," corrected Craig. "Something you could have controlled."  
Kenny just brooded over his workbook, picking up his leaking pen and flipping the book open to the math portion. His fingers were stained with blue ink from where he held the pen, not unlike the nicotine stains on the hands of a chain smoker. "I ain't going on about this," he said curtly. "There's no sense in dwelling on it."  
"That I can understand. So long as you- AH, stop you little fucker!"

Kenny glanced up from his notebook to toss Craig a dirty look, but the other boy wasn't even looking at him. For the third time, Craig growled a reprimand at his Guinea Pig, who was still looking at him innocently with a lock of his hair still in his mouth. "Alright, that's it." This time, he reached up and gently took the rodent in both hands, returning him to the surface of the desk. The Guinea Pig shuffled nonchalantly from his hands and took his time touring the desk again.  
"Why does he keep doing that?" Kenny asked, the terseness gone from his voice and replaced with mild amusement.  
"Because he's retarded and thinks my hair is food."  
"But why?"  
Craig sighed shortly. He supposed he had brought it upon himself by indulging in conversation with Kenny; now he would probably want to talk about everything, even stupid things. "Because when I was younger, I made the mistake of telling my mother that this guava scented shampoo smelled nice. Now she keeps buying it for me because she thinks it's my favorite or something."

"Aw, that's sweet." Kenny seemed utterly oblivious to the glare Craig threw at him; he seemed to down on his luck in successfully casting glares today. "So he thinks your hair is yummy guavas and he tries to eat it."  
"And yet he's too stupid to eat fruit I put in front of him."  
"He IS a rodent, dude. They aren't exactly renowned for their intelligence, you know."

Craig retrieved the Guinea Pig as he scaled the edge of the desk, a little too daringly for his tastes, and he brought him nearly to his chest. He softly stroked the rodent's furry back as he said, "He didn't mean that," his normally flat voice somehow tinged with a hint of affection. "You're super smart, Stripe."  
"If he's so smart, how about he does my workbook for me?" Kenny hopefully passed the book along towards the Guinea Pig, and Craig pushed it away.  
"Stripe doesn't cheat either," he clarified. "And anyway, stop acting stupid. I know you get good grades."  
"I ain't trying to act stupid. There's a distinction between being intelligent and being lazy, and unfortunately I have the honor of being both."

Mr. Adler rather abruptly made his reappearance into the classroom, and both boys jumped in surprise as the door flung open. The teacher was rubbing his neck and shrugging his shoulders stiffly, and he didn't seem to notice the Guinea Pig squirming in Craig's grasp.

Unfortunately, the sudden entrance had stirred the eighth grader from his stupor, and as Mr. Adler trudged back to his desk and heavily took his seat, the eighth grader happened to glance over at his fellow troublemakers.

"Dude, is that a gerbil? Why do you have a gerbil here?" he whispered across the room.  
Before he could stop himself from giving Stripe away, Craig automatically corrected, loudly, "He's a fucking GUINEA PIG."

"Whutsat?" Mr. Adler grunted sleepily, and he finally glanced over at the two boys huddled around the Guinea Pig. "Hey...hey, you kids get back to your seats. Stop screwing around."

"This is my seat," Craig said, covering Stripe with his arms. Mr. Adler had caught him with Stripe on two occasions before and had seemed reluctantly okay with it, but he didn't want to press his luck if he didn't have to.  
"Then you get back to your seat." Mr. Adler pointed at Kenny and gestured to the back of the room. Even he, an authoritative figure in their lives, seemed to glance right over the fact that the boy he was telling off had obviously taken a beating from somewhere. "You two need to be working, not talking. You don't got time to screw around."  
"Seems to me like we've still got a few years to screw around," Kenny mumbled as he haphazardly collected his things and trailed back to his original seat once again.

Craig bided his time until Mr. Adler was preoccupied, and then he shoved Stripe back into his front hoodie pocket. The Guinea Pig made a fuss of it and didn't seem thrilled with the change, but Craig kept him hidden until he calmed down. Stripe was old and used to not always getting his way, and so when it was clear that Craig would not let him out again, he decided that sleep was a good solution to his problems, and anyway, the front pocket was snug and warm.  
Craig glanced at the clock again. Kenny was right. They may as well still have years.

It wasn't for some time later, the clock lazily ticking by the minutes, until Mr. Adler said, "You kids can eat lunch now if you want." His lunch seemed to consist of a few squares of nicotine gum and then a nap at his desk, while the eighth grader had some protein bars. Kenny had nothing.  
Craig, however, had come prepared with several bags of fruits and vegetables that he could share with Stripe, as well as a peanut butter sandwich that had seen better days, and a lukewarm can of Dr. Pepper. This time, when Craig slipped the leafy part of a celery stalk into his front pocket, Stripe dug right in.

Mechanically, he chewed through the sandwich and a bag of almonds while he trudged through the remaining subjects in the workbook. Thoughtlessly he circled in the multiple choice questions from Biology and History, but still he only skimmed the surface of the pages pertaining to Algebra, like shark infested waters.  
One of these days it would occur to him to write down the answers he got from completing the problems, so that he would simply have to copy them the next time.  
That is to say, one day it would occur to him to do this, and he would actually care enough to act upon it.

Craig popped the top to his Dr. Pepper, and the shrill hiss of air brought Mr. Adler back to life again. The old man looked around the room unsurely, but seeing as nothing was amiss, he simply sighed.  
Again he pushed back his chair and stretched his back until it popped and creaked, and then he addressed them again.  
"You boys better behave yourself now, you hear?" he warned them. "If I come back and find out you've been screwing around, we're gonna have problems."  
Not one of the boys acknowledged him. Mr. Adler didn't seem to expect them to.

Craig didn't look up from his workbook until he heard the door close, and then he counted to ten, slowly, and glanced around. The eighth grader had already resumed taking his extended nap, once again becoming a null factor in the classroom. McCormick was being an idiot and balancing his pen on his nose, and when he caught Craig's eye, he grinned and waved.  
Craig pretended he saw nothing and turned his back to him.  
Instead, now that it was safe, he reached into the front of his hoodie and carefully pulled out the Guinea Pig, placing him carefully onto the desk. Stripe sniffed all around the surface of the desk again, as though discovering it for the first time. Craig was certain he still had a bag or two of snacks left, and he dug around in his bookbag until he found a bag of whole sunflower seeds, unsalted. He pulled it open and placed half a dozen in a tiny pile at the corner of the desk, and when Stripe happened upon them, he attacked them enthusiastically.

Craig heard Kenny rise from his desk again, but he again paid no heed. He was working on finishing his Dr. Pepper so that he might eat some of the sunflower seeds himself.  
"Miss me?" Kenny asked as he slid into the desk beside his once again.  
"Not exactly," Craig replied as he observed the Guinea Pig eating sunflower seeds, his little teeth noisily crunching away at the hulls.

Once again completely lacking a sense of personal space, Kenny leaned over Craig's shoulder to observe his progress in his workbook. It was open to Biology, the page in question concerning Mendel and Punnett Squares. Kenny brightened up when he saw it.

"Hey, you're on Punnetts," he enthused. "I've always been fascinated by genetics."  
"If only you were fascinated by whatever was in your own book," Craig mumbled. He sucked the can dry of the last bit of soda, and when he set it down he reached into the bag of sunflower seeds and grabbed a fair-sized handful. He was completely aware of Kenny's eyes keenly watching his movements, but he made no mention of it. He had no intentions of _offering_ him more food.  
"I've been obsessed with learning about them since I was a kid," Kenny went on. "My parents are both brown haired and brown eyed. My brother and sister are both brown haired and brown eyed. But I'm blond haired and blue eyed. So if you haven't noticed, I kind of stick out like a sore thumb."  
_Plink, plink, plink _went the shells every couple of seconds as Craig spit them into the empty can. He asked, "Doesn't your mom have red hair?"  
"It's fake," Kenny assured him. "She says she had red hair when she was young and it turned brown after her teens, so she dyes it."  
"Oh." Craig poured another handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth, sucking on them thoughtfully. "I guess it is kind of too vibrant to be real."  
Kenny seemed a little torn for a second, and then his hand motioned over the bag. "Can I...?"  
"Help yourself," Craig replied, indifferent. At least he had finally galled up and asked. "Asking for food is not the same as begging, you know."  
"I know, but I still don't like it." Kenny poured a generous pile of seeds into his palm and then popped them into his mouth. "Anyway, I don't really know my grandparents, but the one grandpa I know has brown eyes," he continued, every dozen words or so stopping to spit out a sunflower seed shell. "Although, my mother swears that her mother had blue eyes, but my father doesn't remember anyone in his immediate family who did. And they always told me my hair would get darker when it grew in, but it hasn't yet."  
"I see," said Craig. There was not much else to say; not only was Craig unsure of where exactly Kenny was leading with any of this, but the primary thing was that he didn't care.  
Nevertheless, he was starting to see Kenny as something like a less boring distraction from a tedious, even more boring distraction. Absently, he passed the empty soda can back and forth with Kenny to spit out the cracked sunflower hulls. Mendel and his peas were forgotten.

"You know, to be honest, I never thought they were my real family."  
Craig's jaw froze midcrunch, a seed perched fatally between his teeth.  
"When I was a kid I always thought I was like, an adopted prince or something. And my real family would come take me away one day."  
"That's stupid." Craig delivered the executory crunch, and spit out the resulting empty hull. And here he had thought Kenny would say something that might hit a little closer to home. "Why would a royal family drop off their kid in the middle of buttfuck nowhere?"  
"Hey, I said I thought this when I was a kid, alright? Didn't you ever have weird little fantasies like that?"  
"No." _Plink, plink, plink_ went the sunflower shells.  
"Liar," Kenny accused. "I distinctly recall a certain someone pretending to be a spaceman as a kid when we were like, eight or something."  
"So I played pretend and said I was an astronaut. I wasn't disillusioning myself into thinking I was secretly royalty."  
"Well, I, unlike some people, had an imagination." _Plink, plink, plink. _Without waiting for a response, Kenny continued. "So anyway, I remember at one point I'd even convinced my father that my mother must have cheated on him, and they had a paternity test done. I remember them sitting down with me and showing me the test. I don't remember what it said, but apparently it proved they were my real parents and my being born was just an absolute fluke."  
"More like an accident," quipped Craig.  
"A fluke," Kenny said firmly. "But you know, I kind of like that. It makes me different."  
"It's not a good thing to be different," Craig murmured. He sucked on his last seed, and then spit out the hull. _Plink. _He suddenly seemed lost in thought. "It's not a good thing to be abnormal."  
Kenny disagreed: "Uniqueness doesn't necessarily imply abnormality. If anything, it's special to be unique. It's extraordinary how different we all are. " _Plink, _Kenny spit out his last shell as well.  
"Were you going to have more?" Craig asked. Kenny was silent for a moment or two before responding.  
"No."  
"Okay." Without hesitation, he rolled up the bag and slipped it back into his bookbag's front pocket. There was a moment that Kenny seemed to have second thoughts about his decision, but he closed his mouth and wound up saying nothing.  
This was of no consequence to Craig. It wasn't his responsibility to feed the guy.

"You know, you're a genetic oddball yourself, I think," said Kenny with a direct look at Craig's dark hair. He propped his head up with a loose fist against his temple, making no secret about glancing over the other boy from top to bottom. "Your hair is even darker than Stan's; his is kinda brown if you look at it in the light, you know. But your dad's a redhead and your mom's blonde and your sister's like strawberry blonde or whatever it's called, and then bam: you. Black hair." Craig pursed his lips but did not reply. As his earlier fears had warned him, Kenny was getting unnervingly close to a personal truth. It was not a secret; Craig did not keep secrets. He was brutally honest with everyone, most of all himself. But it was still an unpleasant truth, one that if he couldn't hide, he at least preferred to forget about.  
And so even as he squirmed in his seat as he listened to Kenny's careless chatter, Craig allowed him to mull over the conundrum one-sidedly.

"I did some calculating and I decided that I had about a three percent chance of bring born." Craig glanced at Kenny's open workbook, which had been scribbled in here and there but was not even remotely close to being done. Kenny did not fail to follow his gaze. "So I'm no good at math," he admitted. "I might be wrong. But you?" Despite having completed little to none of his math assignment, Kenny thoughtfully chewed over this question of genetics, trying to determine just how much of a statistical anomaly Craig Tucker had to be. As he contemplated, Craig squirmed more.  
"Do you have any grandparents that are dark haired?"  
"No." Almost the entire Tucker family was blonde or red-haired. Now and then brunets popped up. The only ones who had black hair were those who had married into the family, and him.  
"Weird."  
Craig winced. Kenny was studying his hair too intently to notice.  
"It's not dyed, is it?"  
"No."  
"Of course not; that would be too convenient." Kenny inattentively scratched his legitimate blond hair, still mulling over the statistical probability of dark hair coming from two fair haired parents; the exact opposite of his own genetic crisis. "I don't know dude, it's-"  
And Craig finally interrupted him, blurting, "He's not my real father." He said it with no special emphasis or fanfare; his delivery was as flat as was typical for his manner of speech.  
Kenny expressed his surprise by dumbly blinking. "What did you say?" he asked, nonplussed, like it hadn't quite sunk in yet.  
"Thomas Tucker is my stepfather," Craig explained. "My mother was pregnant with me when she met him. My real father bailed when he found out my mother was knocked up. I was born out of wedlock; my mother didn't marry Thomas Tucker until I was nearly a year old. He adopted me and gave me his name when they married. I never knew my real father. But, apparently, he had dark hair. That's where I get it from."  
"Oh. Um, wow." Kenny was blindsided; he hadn't expected his casual chit-chat to unearth such a personal matter. He would have never even guessed something like that; he doubted anyone in the school probably knew that Mr. Tucker was not Craig's biological father, excluding maybe Clyde and Token. It was just something you didn't really ask about, and Craig was not prone to casually distributing personal facts about himself. "Have you known your whole life?"  
"Most of it," he replied. "They were upfront about it. Like you, I started asking questions as a kid when I realized I was different. Unlike you, I can't say I like my answers."  
Craig revealed this information in his typical, no-nonsense, this-is-a-standard-fact sort of way, almost nonchalantly, as if it really made no imprint on his feelings at all.  
But judging by the grave expression on his face as he spoke, it did.  
Ordinary people might have sunken into self-consciousness and embarrassment, but Kenny shamelessly summed it up for them.  
"So, I guess that makes you a bastard, huh?"  
Unabashed, Craig replied, "Yep."  
"I always knew you were a bastard Craig, but damn, you really ARE. That's cool."  
Craig failed to see exactly what was 'cool' about it, but he replied, "Yep."

Craig sighed and picked himself up out of his desk. He slung his bookbag over his shoulder and gently grabbed Stripe, slipping him into his front hoodie pocket. Once again the rodent made a fuss about it, and then calmed down shortly afterward.  
"Where are you going?" Kenny asked.  
"To the window," Craig said shortly. He turned and slowly marched to the back of the classroom.  
"Why?" he heard Kenny ask behind him, puzzled.  
"Because."

South Park K-8 had been holding its Saturday detentions in the same classroom for as long as Craig could remember; that is, for as long as he'd been attending Saturday detentions. It was the same as most classrooms; poorly maintained, no cooling in the summer and little heating in the winter, and large, heavy windows that had been locked for so long that most of them wouldn't open.  
Craig had picked up smoking the previous year, not long after entering sixth grade, and naturally developing such a habit when most of your time was spent institutionalized often required you to get creative. He had discovered the window the previous summer, one of the few in the school with working locks that could be undone and that weren't so old so as to be nonfunctional.  
It wasn't often he could use it; sometimes the teachers wouldn't leave the room and sometimes there were too many students, too many tattle tales.  
But when the only other life forms in the classroom were an eighth grader who seemed to require as much sleep as your average koala and a snot-nosed kid whose last name was McCormick, there seemed nothing wrong with toeing the line a bit.

Craig pushed a desk directly beside the window and unsnapped the locks. He could hear the plastic legs squeal against the tile as Kenny rose from his desk, and then his gentle steps come up from behind him.  
"You hot or something?" Kenny asked as Craig lifted the window.  
"Don't worry about it," Craig retorted sourly. He slumped into the chair and reached into his bookbag. Though Kenny continued to stand directly beside him, he silently retrieved one of the packs of cigarettes, the box squashed and wrinkled, and he thumbed it open.  
"Oh man, smokes." Without another word, Kenny knelt down, resting his arms on Craig's desk. "I've been out for days and been jonesin' for one for about as long. Do you think I could..." Kenny let his request hang unfinished, but there was no question of what he wanted as he expectantly watched Craig pull one from the pack and delicately slip it between his lips.  
"You're quite the beggar today for a guy who hates charity," Craig observed.  
"Asshole."  
He only acquiesced when Kenny wouldn't stop pouting at him. He was unaccustomed to having to share his smokes, and anyway, it wasn't really easy to get hold of them. He relied on high schoolers with sketchy morals to pawn them off on him, and if nothing else, the human interaction vexed him.  
Still, it was only a cigarette.  
"Thanks dude," Kenny said as he breathed out his first rancid puff out the window. "I owe you; I won't forget that."  
"Whatever."

For a time, even a brief time, they silently smoked, and Craig managed to forget about the clock and how annoyed he was by Kenny's constant presence. Even Craig Tucker could admit, there was something to be said about the mutual enjoyment of two kindred spirits smoking a cigarette; even if that other spirit happened to be Kenny McCormick.

The two boys perched themselves on top of the desk, leaning in as close to the gap in the window as possible. The sunlight warm on their faces and the tobacco warm in their lungs, they wantonly smoked.

"We should hang out more," said Kenny.  
"We do hang out," replied Craig.  
"I mean, like, really. We're always inviting you guys along to do stuff. Why don't you ever come?"  
"I don't like your friends," Craig said simply, with no malice. "Kyle and Cartman are loud and obnoxious, and all they do is argue. Stan's okay I guess but, you know, he keeps getting into those bummed out states. And Butters is just fucking annoying."  
"And me?"  
"You're okay, but _you_ hang out with _them_, so you know; smoke and fire and all that. Frankly I wonder why YOU hang out with them."  
"They're my friends," Kenny replied matter-of-factly. "Maybe they aren't the greatest people, but I like them."  
Craig didn't press the issue. "Fair enough." He took a calculated drag, just long enough of a pause to where a change of topic wouldn't seem forced. "Anyway, aren't the two lovebirds broken up right now or something?"  
Kenny took a moment before he tentatively asked, "Stan and Kyle?" Craig nodded. "Sort of. They made up last Saturday."  
"Aw, just in time for Kyle's birthday."  
"Yeah, well, that was sort of the catalyst for it."  
"How sweet. Ah; the bitterness of love quarrels."  
Kenny elbowed the other boy with a sharp jab, but it only elicited a grunt. "They aren't gay, dude," he said pointedly.  
"I know," Craig replied just as pointedly, as if perhaps he had thought this was obvious all along and he didn't see why anyone else would think otherwise. "I just think it's amusing to act like they are."  
"I shouldn't be surprised at the things Craig Tucker finds amusing, I guess."  
"I guess you shouldn't."

Their words fizzled out again. They both seemed fascinated with the world outside the classroom, though to be fair any scenery change was welcome from the plain interior of the classroom they had spent the last few hours in.

"Do you like your family?" Kenny asked, hesitantly breaking the lengthy silence.  
"I guess," said Craig. He was growing used to the other boy introducing odd conversation, even if he didn't care much for the topics. If it had been up to him, Craig and Kenny would have sat in silence for six hours. So Craig decided to allow him to continue steering along their discussions, and he would simply ride along.  
"Like, even if that guy, you know... isn't really your dad?"  
Craig shrugged. "He may as well be. He raised me." His first cigarette spent, he flicked it underneath the open window and peeled another from the smushed box. Wordlessly, he placed a second one on the desk without insinuation, and Kenny claimed it shortly afterward. "Do you like yours?" Craig didn't know what to believe about the McCormick family. Talk traveled fast in South Park, but the talk wasn't always accurate. There was, of course, the perpetual undying rumor of Craig himself being a troublemaker, which had no factual basis whatsoever, aside from his tendency to bring his Guinea Pig with him to school. But he had a hunch that not all of what was said about Kenny's parents was untrue, if his eyes were any implication.  
"I like my life," Kenny said.  
"Liking your life and liking your parents are two totally different things," Craig pointed out. He allowed Kenny a reprieve to consider this as he lit both of their cigarettes, one after the other, and then pocketed the lighter.  
"They aren't the best parents, no."  
"You're side-stepping the question. You can't ask me something like that flat out and then not answer it yourself."  
"Then I guess what I'm trying to say is no, I don't really like my family. Except Karen. God knows I love her more than I love myself."  
"Fair enough."

Kenny picked himself up off his knees and leaned over the desk. The close proximity irked Craig, but after all, they both had to stay near the window.

"So you remember what I was saying earlier about not feeling like your family is real?"  
"Uh huh."  
"You ever feel like you were just born wrong? Like, God had other plans for you that fell through and lacking a back-up plan, he just sort of threw you into the first vagina that became available?"  
Craig snorted to stifle a chuckle, but he couldn't stop his mouth from curling up into a smirk. "I guess I never thought about it like that."  
"You understand what I mean right?" Kenny pressed. "Because, you're like, the second poorest family in South Park-"  
"Says who?" Craig interrupted. It was true his family was on welfare, but they weren't anywhere near McCormick level poor; that was for sure.  
"Cartman," cited Kenny.  
"Cartman talks a lot of shit."  
"Yeah, he talks a lot of shit, but it's usually because he's right." Having seen this fact for himself, Craig refused to refute it. Anyway, what did it matter? They certainly weren't financially well off, and he was not one to overlook simple facts. "Plus, you're one of the only kids in the school who's not a McCormick who gets free lunch. Am I wrong?" Again, Craig had no reasonable response to this, so Kenny continued. "But like...what if we really were given to the wrong families at birth? What if your life really isn't the life you're supposed to be living?"  
Craig just shook his head and took a drag on his cigarette, disinterested. "I've never thought about it," he said again.  
"Well, think about it now. You don't belong to that poor ass family. You aren't a bastard child living in some shithole of a mountain town. You're actually a prince from some far away land and your real parents have come to reclaim you."  
"But, they are my real family."  
"Jesus Christ, dude. Have some imagination. Just for fun."  
"You don't understand. Those people raised me. Maybe the man I call father didn't supply my Y chromosome, but he has always been my father. They've taken care of me when I was sick and kissed me good night. They've punished me and rewarded me and talked me through hard times. I've hated them and I've loved them and I've wished they were dead and cried over them being gone. They're my family. Not some snooty fucking royalty that shows up out of no where. That's not family."

Kenny was giving Craig a look that implied that his words had completely dumbfounded him, and yet Craig appeared no more affected by the emotional soliloquy than he was by the smoke drifting up from his fingers. "I'm sorry dude. I sort of got the vibe that you didn't like your family," Kenny admitted. "That's why I asked."  
"Oh, I don't like my family," Craig deadpanned. Again, Kenny had that look on his face; that "are-you-shitting-me-right-now" face. He was surprisingly expressive when not hidden under his parka.  
"Then what the hell was all that family garbage about?" he demanded.  
"It's just how it is," Craig replied.  
Kenny released a frustrated sigh. "Dude, does it never occur to you that things don't have to just be 'how they are?' That you can change things?"  
"Nope."  
"But don't you ever think about something like that?" Kenny persisted. "Don't you ever wonder?" Surely, even Craig Tucker could provide a reasonable answer if prodded enough. Even Tucker could dream, right?  
"No," Craig replied, with no more and no less emotion than before. "I never wonder about anything."

They were both gazing out the window with void expressions, staring off into another distant world. The cigarettes in their fingers were nearly spent, and neither of them seemed to care.  
Kenny said quietly, "That must make for an awfully lonely life."  
"What?"  
"To never wonder about anything. Half the reason I stay sane is wondering about shit."  
"And the other half?"  
"Tits," was the simple reply.  
"Ah," was the simple response.

"So what?" Kenny provoked, giving him no time to recuperate. "You just float through life not giving a shit about anything?"  
"That's the plan."  
"It's a shitty plan, dude."  
"Yeah, and what's your plan? Just gonna pick up where your parents left off?"  
Kenny's response was cold and fiercely passionate. "I will NEVER be my parents," he asserted. "EVER."  
"Yeah, because you've got to be a special snowflake. You're the one who needs to be _different_ and treat it like it's a gift from god because you're _special_." Craig's voice was steadily garnering a harsher tone, but Kenny's was already knife-like in its sharpness.  
"Don't be a Goddamn asshole, dude. Anything I do with my life will be better than resigning myself to never caring about anyone but myself."  
"I'm not being an asshole. If you _still_ haven't caught on, this sort of thing just doesn't really interest me. I don't need to wonder about my life; I already know everything I need to know about myself."  
"And you know, that shouldn't surprise me either. Sometimes I don't think there's a goddamn thing going on in that head of yours, Craigy."

Craig tensed up and began grinding his teeth. Kenny was used to a complete lack of reaction from Craig, and so even this small, insignificant reaction to his words alarmed him.  
"What's wrong?" he asked.  
"Don't fucking call me that," Craig said low, like a growl. "I can't stand when people call me that."  
Nonplussed, Kenny neither favored him with an apology nor insulted him with a snide remark. "Sore spot?" was all he asked.  
"Yeah." All at once more visibly irritated than he had been all day, Craig jumped down from the desk and flicked the remainder of his curled cigarette butt out the window. Hands shoved into his front hoodie pocket, he sulked back to his desk without another word, and slunk into it with a low sigh.

To his credit, Kenny gave him his space for several minutes afterward. He stayed put long enough to finish his own cigarette and then snuff out the tip with two wet fingers before he slipped it under the glass. After tightly closing the window and fastening the locks on it, he hesitantly approached Craig with hands buried deep in his jean pockets, and sat down.

The other boy had released Stripe again, and he rested his chin on the desk, eye level with the rodent, while they stared at each other face to face. Craig's eyes were nearly closed, but Stripe seemed to think they were engaged in a staring contest; the rodent's gaze was unwavering, even as his nose twitched.  
"You okay?" Kenny asked. "You don't usually get like that for no reason."  
"I'm fine," Craig ground out through clenched teeth. Stripe seemed to think Craig was talking to him, for his words sent him scurrying off to the other edge of the desk.  
Kenny slumped into the chair next to him. Though Stripe had left him, Craig continued to stare intently, straight ahead, his pensive gaze directed somewhere far away.

"I need to get out of here, dude," Kenny sighed. "This shithole of a town is sucking the life out of me."  
"Then leave," said Craig, in the manner of someone pointing out a fact they found overtly obvious.  
"It's not that simple, dude." A few seconds passed before Kenny began to chuckle. "Funny. Kyle said that shit to me last week, word for word, and I told him he was wrong. Some things seem so simple on the outside."  
"They are simple," Craig assured him. "We're just the ones that are complicated."  
Kenny silently mulled over this assertion for a moment before saying, "Craig," very emphatically, so purposely that Craig actually broke out of his reverie long enough to glance up at him. "I think that's one of the more profound things I've heard come from your mouth yet."  
"Is it?" said Craig. Disinterested, he returned to staring at his unseen world. "There's nothing profound about the truth."  
"Maybe there is a bit of thought rolling around in that head of yours, after all."

There was another brief pause. Without glancing up, Craig said quietly, his flat voice pierced with shaking feeling, "I ain't stupid, Ken."  
Surprised, Kenny blinked uncertainly. Very few people called him 'Ken,' and when they did, it was either a low-jab joke, or in a very serious atmosphere. He half wanted to make some smart-ass rebuttal, but the sullen expression that had settled on Craig's face made him bite his tongue. He observed the other boy's silent rumination for a few more seconds before he replied. "I know, dude." He said it with utmost sincerity. Kenny thought a lot of people in the world were too stupid to deserve to live; Craig Tucker was not one of them.  
"People think there's something wrong with me but there's not. I don't need to be fixed; I'm not broken. I'm not different."  
Kenny wasn't very good at comforting people when they were down, but nonetheless he reached out and rubbed his back reassuringly, and though he tensed in response, Craig didn't tell him off. "Sure you ain't," Kenny said. "People talk a lot of shit but the people who know you know better."  
"Fuck, _you_ don't even fucking know me, dude. You don't even know what I _am_."  
"I know you enough," Kenny said, "-to know what you aren't."  
"I'm not bad. I'm not a troublemaker. I'm not a fucking _bad kid_, Ken." He lay his head onto the desk and erected a fortress around his face with his arms in which to hide. If only he could just make his world a little smaller, make the things within it a little more manageable. The world was too big, too loud, too confusing. He could never grasp onto it enough to understand it; the world slipped through his fingers like anxious grains of sand, and then washed away with the tide of time; so unforgiving.

"You can't control what other people think about you, dude." For all of the head butting they'd been doing throughout the day, Kenny seemed remarkably calm and level-headed. He didn't question what Craig meant by any of this or try to tell him that no one had called him a bad kid to begin with; he simply rubbed his back and talked to him, his voice slowly, dutifully chipping away at the wall. "Sometimes people will think things about you that aren't true. You can't control what they say. You just can't let it get to you, that's all."  
"That's my problem though, Ken." Craig did not lift his head from the desk, and his arms closed even tighter. His voice was soft enough as it was; Kenny had to lean in close to hear him from within his self-erected fortress, his blue wrinkled sleeves like mountain peaks around his face. "I can't control anything in my life. I try to have things just so. I try to have everything a certain way. I try to avoid being around people that endanger my neat little world. And it's never enough. It's like every day I try to get out there and build a sand castle, and then the tide comes in and washes it away or some mean kid walks over and kicks it. And what am I supposed to do? Just accept it?"  
Craig's head raised just a few inches, just enough for his eyes to peer out over the edge of the wall. "I just want..." he mumbled and then trailed, only completing the thought when his head withdrew back into his protective shell. "A little Goddamn peace and quiet, Ken." He released a heavy, aching sigh, and that marked the end of it, at least on his end.

"Craig, you've been honest with me all day. Not many people have the guts to be brutally honest with me, or to make me be honest with myself. Especially about this." Kenny raised a hand to an eye and softly outlined the bruise, but seeing as Craig's face was still firmly planted in his arms, the gesture went unnoticed.  
"Don't be so flattered," Craig muttered. "I just don't believe in lying to yourself."  
"Then I won't lie to you now, Craig. You're going to think I'm off my rocker because I don't really know how to explain it, but hear me out, okay?"  
Craig slowly shrugged his shoulders. Kenny had been saying whatever was on his mind all day; it wasn't like he needed his permission. "Then shoot."  
"You're the dream within a dream."

Craig lifted his head from his arms. His brow furrowed with confusion, he said, "Huh?"  
"You're too obsessed with control. The sand is slipping through your fingers and you can't keep hold of a single grain. So you sit in your sand and try to build your sand castles and the tide washes it away or some mean kid comes and kicks it over, and you can't move on from that. You won't look beyond all that. You just sit and dwell in it and think that if you just try to build another one, it'll be better. But it's not, dude. That's not how life works. Accepting bad things means trying to change them; not learning to live with them. You try to just not care when things get bad, but that's not the answer either; you can't just exist in a constant state of apathy."  
Still trying to absorb the words, a familiar one came to Craig's mind. "Ambivalence."  
"Yeah." Kenny pondered to himself for a moment, and in the pending silence, Craig expectantly looked up at him.  
It was the first time he had intentionally looked him in the eye all day.  
"Bad things happen," Kenny said softly. "Your castles are going to get washed away and kicked over; but you can't just keep sitting in the same spot doing the same thing over and over again. At that point it's not even like you're building a sand castle and hoping it'll survive the next high tide; you're building castles in the sky, and then you never even try to reach for them."

Stripe was nipping at Craig's sleeves, incessantly demanding that his master give him attention. Craig uneasily unfurled his arm from around his face and set it flat on the desk, palm up. His face remained flat on the desk as well, as if he had no strength to lift it.  
Stripe wasted no time in crawling up the baggy sleeves, though again he needed a little push from Craig to finish getting onto his shoulder. As before, he was instantly drawn to the few locks of dark hair sticking out of the blue chullo, and he nibbled them gently.  
Rather than snap at the persistent rodent, Craig just gently smiled.  
"You know what I think, McCormick?" he finally said.  
"That I'm full of shit?"  
"Yeah, that too. But mostly that maybe you wonder a little too much."  
Kenny smirked and propped his feet up on the desk in front of his, and then leaned back, supporting his head with his arms. "Someone in this fucking town has to."  
Craig stroked Stripe's chin with a single curled index finger, contemplatively. The rodent cooed happily. "Fair enough."

* * *

Mr. Adler trailed into the classroom like a cloud of dust. Again he noticed the two boys sitting together, but this time instead of issuing a reprimand, he simply shook his head. They hadn't caused any trouble, and anyway, the day was nearly at an end.  
"Ya'll better finish up your workbooks," Mr. Adler said to a room he had no doubt would respond to his words with silence. "The day's about up."  
Kenny winked at Craig and buried his nose into his workbook. Even now the thing was barely touched, but in the last dizzying half hour he had, Kenny made good use of it, and he managed to fill in every single page, including essay questions.  
Whether or not any of it was legitimate work or complete bullshit was not readily apparent, but the point was that it was done.

Craig managed to inconspicuously slip Stripe back into the critter carrier in his backpack, and he securely fastened the pink lid to the plastic housing, double and triple checking this time to be sure that it would not loosen in the time it took to get Stripe back to his cage.  
There was still a bag of carrots left in his bookbag, he realized, and after he pulled out the little baggie and looked it over, he got Kenny's attention with a sharp hiss. When Kenny looked up with a soundless question on his lips, Craig threw him the bag. Kenny caught it in midair and tore into it, shoveling the carrots in his mouth and chewing and crunching noisily. He threw Craig a thumb's up, and smirking, Craig threw him a middle finger in response.  
Kenny just rolled his eyes, his stupid self-satisfied grin carved into his face.

After the workbooks had been collected and Mr. Adler satisfied himself that the classroom hadn't been wrecked, he released them from Saturday Detention, warning them that they didn't need to wind back up in there if they would just stop screwing around. Particularly, he looked at Craig, and asserted that they screwed around too much.

Craig's father was already parked outside the school, (it wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, that he would be picking up his son from Saturday Detention) but there was no one to pick Kenny up. He refused a ride when offered, but just before they parted ways, he cuffed Craig on the shoulder.  
"Let's stop being strangers," he said.  
"We aren't," Craig replied, bemused. "We see each other every day."  
"I mean, what I said before. Let's hang out. You know, like friends."  
"We could do that. But not now; I need to get Stripe home now."  
"Then some other time." Kenny replaced the hood over his head, covering his eyes. Once again, his face consisted of a single, stupid grin. "I wonder if you're just telling me that to get rid of me," he teased.  
Craig scoffed, and as he walked away, he said carelessly over his shoulder, "I told you, you wonder too much."

Craig gingerly removed his bookbag as he slid into the car, and after buckling himself in he held it protectively against his chest. He wasn't going to make Stripe's transport any more difficult than it had to be.  
"You and the McCormick kid friends now or something?" Thomas asked. Craig looked out the window; Kenny was waving. He waved back as they began to pull away, though it was questionable whether Kenny saw it with his eyes hidden.  
"Something like that," Craig replied. He could guess what was going through his father's mind; on one hand, no one liked the McCormick parents. They were well renowned to be bad news. But on the other, Kenny didn't have his reputation of being a "bad kid," and if nothing else, the fact that he had a friend that wasn't Clyde or Token was something new.  
After an extended pause during which Craig imagined his father probably thought all of this over, Thomas said, "That's nice,"  
Craig nodded, his gaze firmly fixated on the window. "Yep."

Craig never wondered about anything. He liked his world to be neat and compact and all planned according to how he wanted it to be.  
He liked it to be in his control as much as possible, and wondering and thinking about the world he couldn't control never did him any favors.

But still...

Kenny swaggered into his mind, blackened eyes hidden from sight by the most obnoxious orange parka ever for a guy who so enjoyed fading into the background. He was talking about some nonsense as he usually did, the things that Craig didn't care about. His shitty friends and their problems and hair color and genetics and sand slipping through his fingers and sky castles and how his bruises didn't hurt no more.  
Anything, everything, and nothing.  
That was the thing that irritated Craig about Kenny, but at the same time, it intrigued him.  
Ambivalence.  
He never knew what the hell was going through the kid's mind, and God forbid he ever have a clue what he was going to say. He was the most unpredictable kid he knew; the ultimate "fuck you" in terms of his much desired control.

The scenery rushed by outside the confines of the car, and Craig protectively clutched onto his bookbag. Absently staring out the window, Craig let his mind drift astray, and he wondered.


End file.
